Devuan is an attempt to create a distro that does not have an option for systemd. I find it ironic that in criticizing the lack of choice in other distros, they're creating a distro with a lack of choice.
I expect that as more people get used to/grow up with systemd, it will fall by the wayside and turn into a niche distro. That's cool if it happens--lots of niche distros are still around years later--but it's not likely to be taken seriously in enterprise environments.
Kali switched because Debian switched. It's that simple. The OffSec crew is interested in getting tools to run on a base distro so they can focus on the tools and let the upstream distro handle other problems. Since all the work had been done on getting things working with Debian, changing to another distro probably was not viewed as especially desirable (especially since most other distros use or are planning to use systemd anyway).
I'm looking seriously at solar, though the installed cost isn't quite to where I need it (last I checked about a year ago, it was around $3 per watt, and I need it to be below $2.40 per watt). If you have some solid information on DIY, I'd love to look at it, as that would dramatically reduce the costs involved. I'd love for the only labor costs to be the electrician to handle the connectivity.
He's talking about nameplate capacity against power produced, and that solar produces around 20% of nameplate capacity on average over 24 hours whereas coal can produce around the full capacity, though plants usually aren't run at that level for very long as it increases wear and tear.
It does now, as of Kali 2.0, which is based on Debian 8. Its presence can be verified by running dpkg -l | grep systemd to find the installed packages, ps aux | grep systemd to find the processes, and trying to start a service that won't start for some reason to get the notes about running systemctl status something.service to find out what happened.
Most of the services themselves seem to show up in/etc/init.d, though, so there's still lots of init script use.
Neither of these points bother me, though I'm going to have to get used to a few new commands.
According to the US EIA, in 2012, the overnight capital cost per kilowatt (effectively the construction cost) for coal ranged from $2,934 to $6,599, depending on the type and size of the plant. Solar thermal was at $5,067, and photovoltaic was $3,873 to $4,183 per kilowatt, placing it squarely in competition with coal. That was three years ago; since then, solar power installation costs have dropped even further, while coal has likely stayed about the same, or perhaps even increased slightly.
However, it's still a pretty far cry from natural gas. Excluding fuel cells, the overnight costs ranged from $676 to $2095 per kilowatt. Solar would have to drop nearly half from its lower cost to gas's highest cost. It is dropping, and it probably will get there, but I expect that it's not going to be competitive with gas for a few years yet.
Part of the issue now I think is that labor has become a far more substantial part of solar installations, and that's a relatively inflexible amount. For example, if half of the cost of solar is the labor (not sure if it is or not), then even if the panels were free, it would only be competitive with certain kinds of gas plants.
That it wasn't allowed doesn't mean that it's not part of the accident chain. A solution is to not provide the reason for the denial of the medical, just that it's been denied/revoked.
I'm a pilot, too. And yes, aviate, navigate, communicate, in that order. The idea that "talking to somebody on the ground doesn't help you in an emergency" is meant for immediate concerns, especially when you're the only pilot aboard, like when you decide to abort a landing. Tower may call you with instructions, but until you've got things under control in the plane and are certain of pattern traffic, you don't worry about talking to them.
But flying an airliner is far from flying a Cessna (or Piper or Diamond or Mooney or whatever you're learning in). In the case of an emergency aboard an airliner, one pilot deals with the issue while the other flies the plane and communicates. The Continental 777-224 (MH370 was a 777-200ER) checklist for fire from the manual dated November 2002 includes the following under the heading "SMOKE / FUMES / FIRE ELEC":
Condition: Electrical smoke / fumes / fire is identified.
Oxygen Masks And Smoke Goggles (If Required) -- ON
Crew Communications (If Required) -- ESTABLISH
Recirculation Fans Switches (Both) -- OFF
IF Smoke / Fumes / Fire Source Known:
Electrical Power (Affected Equipment) -- REMOVE
If practical, remove power from affected equipment by switch or circuit breaker in flight deck or cabin.
OR IF Smoke / Fumes / Fire Persists Or Source Unknown And Inflight Entertainment System / Passenger Seats And Cabin / Utility Power Switches Installed On Electrical Panel:
Inflight Entertainment System / Passenger Seats Power Switch..OFF
Cabin / Utility Power Switch -- OFF
Plan to land at the nearest suitable airport.
OR IF Smoke / Fumes / Fire Persists Or Source Unknown And Inflight Entertainment System / Passenger Seats And Cabin / Utility Power Switches Not Installed On Electrical Panel:
Cabin Reading And Galley Attendant Work Lights -- ON
Instruct Flight Attendants to:
Turn on cabin reading lights switches.
Turn on galley attendant work lights switches.
Cabin Equipment -- OFF
Instruct Flight Attendants to:
Turn off galley power switches.
Turn off cabin fluorescent light switches.
Turn off main IFE and PC power switches above purser station.
Plan to land at the nearest suitable airport.
It may be slightly different from Malaysia Air's manual for the 777-200 series, but not by very much. Notice that there's nothing that says that everything gets turned off immediately. In particular, note the line that says, "If practical, remove power from affected equipment by switch or circuit breaker in flight deck or cabin." If practical. Dropping communications is not terribly practical, especially when you're over water. It's also worth noting that there are separate breakers for the radios, one on each side of the breaker panel (I believe each pilot's panel contains a separate radio), and that the ACARS, a text-based system that can also be used to send messages, is reportedly difficult (but not impossible) to disable. On top of all of that, even if both radios got turned off by pulling the breakers, it takes literally two seconds to make the call, "MH370 declaring in-flight emergency" before pulling the breakers. The lack of communication after that would set off an immediate search and probably fighter intercept since they wouldn't know if the emergency was a fire, engine failure, or hijacking.
Further undermining your hypothesis (it's not a theory as you have little real evidence) is that the final radio communication was at 01:19:30 and the final transponder hit was at 01:21:13, more than 90 seconds later. If you were right that they started shutting things off rapidly due to a fire, it would mean that they took an exceptionally long break in ATC communications. I've listened to and participated a lot in transitions between ATC zones (a consequence of flying in the SoCal air
There were multiple failures in that chain. Lubitz was found unfit to fly and was told as much. He was then given a note to pass on to his employer. He didn't, was able to lock the captain out of the cockpit, and crashed the plane.
The failures included, at a minimum, the apparent lack of procedure for doctors to directly notify the airline and pilot certification authority that they were revoking his medical, and lack of procedure requiring that two people be in the cockpit at all times. A direct notification of the airline or pilot certification authority at the time of the revocation (like, before he even left the building) or a requirement that a flight attendant be in the cockpit when one of the pilots is outside it probably would have prevented this.
MH370 was almost certainly not a fire. A fire wouldn't account for the path the plane took, nor would it explain why so many communications systems were shut down or why no distress call was made. Voice communications ceased immediately after a handoff from Malaysian to Vietnamese ATC, and the transponder was turned off soon after.
That's how it used to be, and a reason why Cessna and some other companies stopped making new planes for more than a decade. General aviation manufacturers have better protections now, but insurance costs and FAA Part 23 regulations have driven up the cost of aircraft to ridiculous amounts. A fully-equipped Cessna 172P sold for about $42,000 in 1982 (about $103,000 in 2015 dollars). It wasn't a casual purchase, but it wasn't hard for a club or a moderately successful person to buy one.
Today, the 172S has a base price of $364,000 (about $147,000 in 1982 dollars), and the prices only get worse from there for planes that have practical four-seat capability. Part of it is because glass cockpits have become the standard for most new aircraft, but insurance is still extremely high and the FAA hasn't allowed more advanced construction methods to be used without enormous testing that makes it financially infeasible. Hopefully, that will change with the Part 23 rewrite, but I don't think anyone is expecting a 2/3 drop in aircraft prices.
And we're thankful for that. However, since those are largely codified into law now, the need for the unions has lessened.
I've seen a family member burned by aerospace unions in the '80s and '90s. He got so sick of them showing up at the picket lines in fancy cars and wearing expensive suits, continuing to draw a salary while he got strike benefits (a pittance) that he started crossing the picket lines to work.
On the other hand, I've also seen the nurses' union fight to increase the number of nurses per patient, both to increase patient safety and to decrease burnout in the nursing industry.
There's enough good that some unions still have value, but there's also enough bad that some of them are just dead weight. When unions exist solely to protect themselves, they've become as bad as the companies they once battled.
He's trying to force Iraq and its local allies to deal with the problem rather than inserting American troops into combat situations in an area where they're largely unwanted or even hated. (The forces on the ground are largely there for training, not combat.) Part of dealing with the problem was getting the extremely anti-Sunni al-Maliki out and bringing in al-Abadi, who has promised to work with the Sunnis and has reportedly done so well enough to start changing the minds of some of the Sunni tribal leaders.
By conducting airstrikes, the US and participating allies are filling in a gap in Iraq's military capabilities. They have a few strike aircraft, but they're old and not built to handle the weapons that Iraq is buying from the West. The first F-16s in the Iraqi Air Force were delivered to Iraq itself (rather than being used for training Iraqi pilots in Arizona) just three weeks ago. Delivery was delayed over security concerns at Balad Air Base, which isn't far from ISIS territory.
I don't know if it will work, but it's probably the best option from a list of pretty much only bad options right now. The air mission may be expanding, though, as the US has said it is willing, together with Turkey, to protect civilian populations in at least part of Syria from Syrian bombing runs. That suggests a no-fly zone for those parts, and that can result in a serious escalation. (Turkey wants a no-fly zone over all of Syria and has called for it for years.) All it takes is for one Syrian aircraft to be knocked down and Syria to respond by even targeting US or allied planes with surface-to-air radar, and the US will have reason to respond by taking out at least part of Syria's air defense network and possibly its air force. That could turn the controlled chaos barely held together by Syrian forces into complete anarchy if the government forces are denied air cover. It could be what actually breaks the back of the government, and then it will be a race between ISIS, al-Nusra, and the Free Syrian Army coalition to get to Damascus. At least if ISIS gets knocked down or out, there's a slim chance of a negotiated collapse.
So far, Syria has been tolerant of Turkey shooting down a couple of its aircraft that strayed too close to or over the border with Turkey, but it may not be so willing to tolerate its aircraft being shot down well inside its own territory. If it escalates, we might see just what the actual effectiveness of the Russian S300 SAM system actually is.
I'm not ascribing special status. I'm explaining how they think and how they view outsiders. Russia has been a fairly xenophobic society for a very long time.
Whether they were successful in repelling the invaders isn't really a factor, either. It's that they're constantly concerned about being invaded. Check with the Poles and you'll find that they, too, are wary of it for precisely the reason that you mention. They're constantly looking over their shoulder at Russia, and don't fully trust Germany, either.
If benefits are what makes it morally right to use taxis over Uber/Lyft, then doesn't that make buying from large chain stores morally better than buying from mom-and-pop stores, since those are often so small that they don't have to provide benefits to their employees?
Every home I ever visited within my extended family was under 2000sf, and many of them were under 1300sf, until my parents bought a 2100sf home in the late 1990s. That was the biggest in the family until I bought my 3800sf house.
Go look at older neighborhoods, particularly those built before 1980. They're far smaller than we see today. Home sizes overall are growing, with the average in 2014 being 2600 square feet, larger than the 2400sf that was the average during the housing boom.
The taxi industry is a poor example if you're looking for something that needs sympathy. Getting in as anything other than a hired driver is nearly impossible. Look at the prices of taxi medallions. In Chicago, a medallion went for about $70K in 2007 before skyrocketing to $357,000 in 2013, then falling back to $270,000 earlier this year. In New York City, it's even worse: they were going for around $850,000 earlier this year, down from $1.2 million in early 2014.
There's also the problem of having a cab around when you want one. Some cities are great for this; the aforementioned Chicago and NYC are examples of places where it's generally easy to get a cab. But in much of Southern California or the Dallas suburbs, cabs are relatively rare, and even when calling the company, the wait can be significantly over an hour compared to an Uber or Lyft pickup time of usually only a few minutes.
In any case, if the only reason that a new industry is morally wrong is because it puts people out of work, then almost every industry today is morally wrong. The tractor industry would be wrong because it put farm workers out of work. The airlines would be morally wrong because they put ships' crews out of work. The printer companies would be morally wrong because they put typing pools out of work. And yet no one really claims this because it's not true.
I didn't say it makes them unimportant. I said it makes them hard to fight over, and that means far less chance of fighting. Absent discovery of significant resources in those locations that can be economically extracted, there's no reason for an outright war over them. India and China are both well aware of the problems that India and Pakistan have had fighting over the Siachen Glacier, where around 2000 troops have died, all but a few dozen from exposure, avalanches, or other climate-related circumstances. Neither China nor India wants to deal with that to fight over economically unimportant territory. That's why there's an occasional skirmish, but not much else.
One exception may be the Tawang region in eastern India, but China would still have to cross the mountains to take it if it came to war. India would likely have significant notification of a build-up, and could through airstrikes and artillery make life difficult for any Chinese forces heading over. That's not including whatever economic restrictions would be placed on China over such actions.
Russia and its predecessors have a history of about 800 years of being invaded by one group or another. These included the Mongols in 1223 (who weren't driven out completely until 1480), the Crimean Tatars in 1571, the Polish-Muscovite War from 1605-1618, the Cossack uprising and incursion from 1667-1670, Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Japan in 1904 (mostly naval, but still an attack by an outside power), and Germany in 1941. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the eventual joining of NATO by every non-Soviet member (plus the former Soviet Baltic states) is often seen internally as an incursion into Russian interests, with the discussions of Georgia and especially Ukraine joining NATO leaving Moscow surrounded by enemies who are only a couple of weeks' fighting from the gates of Moscow.
It has a traditional reason to be xenophobic, regardless of whether it makes logical sense to those outside Russia. The Warsaw Pact nations and the former Soviet republics were buffer zones for Russia, land they could afford to lose, at least temporarily, while ensuring that Russia itself survived.
The current situation is only barely tolerable to Moscow, and is exacerbated by recent low Russian birth rates and low life expectancy, leading to a decline in population for nearly two decades. While this is turning around recently, the increasing birth rate is also heavily subsidized by the government (families who have more than one child get a lump-sum payment of about 428,000 rubles (worth about $6800 now, as much as $11,000 before the downturn in oil prices) and heavily dependent on the economy, which is in a difficult position, to say the least. As fragile as it is, it may decrease due to hits to the economy if more sanctions are added or the nuclear deal with Iran induces further oil price reductions, and perhaps in that case by increased alcoholism (more than a third of deaths in Russia are linked to alcohol).
I don't expect Russia to go to nuclear war, but they see the situation as desperate, possibly bordering on disastrous, and it puts them in a difficult position where even pie-in-the-sky ideas (like a Bering Straits bridge, to get back to the original post) sound like a good idea. You might think their position self-made, illogical, or even stupid, but it's very real. You don't have to agree with it to understand it, but dismissing it is just dangerous.
Sometimes it's the only way. We held off on airstrikes against ISIS specifically to ensure that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki would not hold on to his position. As soon as his successor's selection (and so someone who actually accepted the Sunni) was ensured, airstrikes started in earnest. (They had begun already to help protect Yazidi tribes fleeing ISIS persecution, but only a handful of those happened.)
As much as Karmashock's hyperbole and predictions are off-base, on that point, he's right.
China is prodding Vietnam and the Philippines over maritime claims, yes, but to say they're picking on Japan isn't really accurate, as Tokyo's nationalist mayor restarted the public argument over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. This triggered Japan's nationalization of the islands to try to ward off further diplomatic incident, causing an incident which inflamed the Chinese people, which demanded action from the government... The whole thing is a mess that the governments in Beijing and Tokyo would be much happier to see die down again.
And how are you bringing India into this? Aside from a moderately-disputed, very high-altitude border that would be difficult to cross with ground forces (let alone fight in), China and India don't have much in the way of overlapping claims. Even if China got serious territorial ambitions for Indian territory, India's military is at least as good as China's, wouldn't have lengthy supply lines to deal with, and has far more combat experience in the last few decades than does China. The Indian Navy--much stronger than China's--could also make life incredibly difficult for Chinese trade passing through the Indian Ocean for Africa and the Suez Canal, especially since India has a strong blue-water navy and China is still coming to grips with serious operations outside of the China Seas.
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Devuan is an attempt to create a distro that does not have an option for systemd. I find it ironic that in criticizing the lack of choice in other distros, they're creating a distro with a lack of choice.
I expect that as more people get used to/grow up with systemd, it will fall by the wayside and turn into a niche distro. That's cool if it happens--lots of niche distros are still around years later--but it's not likely to be taken seriously in enterprise environments.
apt-get install cinnamon
Or whatever other DE suits you, as long as its available on Debian 8.
Kali switched because Debian switched. It's that simple. The OffSec crew is interested in getting tools to run on a base distro so they can focus on the tools and let the upstream distro handle other problems. Since all the work had been done on getting things working with Debian, changing to another distro probably was not viewed as especially desirable (especially since most other distros use or are planning to use systemd anyway).
I'm looking seriously at solar, though the installed cost isn't quite to where I need it (last I checked about a year ago, it was around $3 per watt, and I need it to be below $2.40 per watt). If you have some solid information on DIY, I'd love to look at it, as that would dramatically reduce the costs involved. I'd love for the only labor costs to be the electrician to handle the connectivity.
He's talking about nameplate capacity against power produced, and that solar produces around 20% of nameplate capacity on average over 24 hours whereas coal can produce around the full capacity, though plants usually aren't run at that level for very long as it increases wear and tear.
It does now, as of Kali 2.0, which is based on Debian 8. Its presence can be verified by running dpkg -l | grep systemd to find the installed packages, ps aux | grep systemd to find the processes, and trying to start a service that won't start for some reason to get the notes about running systemctl status something.service to find out what happened.
Most of the services themselves seem to show up in /etc/init.d, though, so there's still lots of init script use.
Neither of these points bother me, though I'm going to have to get used to a few new commands.
According to the US EIA, in 2012, the overnight capital cost per kilowatt (effectively the construction cost) for coal ranged from $2,934 to $6,599, depending on the type and size of the plant. Solar thermal was at $5,067, and photovoltaic was $3,873 to $4,183 per kilowatt, placing it squarely in competition with coal. That was three years ago; since then, solar power installation costs have dropped even further, while coal has likely stayed about the same, or perhaps even increased slightly.
However, it's still a pretty far cry from natural gas. Excluding fuel cells, the overnight costs ranged from $676 to $2095 per kilowatt. Solar would have to drop nearly half from its lower cost to gas's highest cost. It is dropping, and it probably will get there, but I expect that it's not going to be competitive with gas for a few years yet.
Part of the issue now I think is that labor has become a far more substantial part of solar installations, and that's a relatively inflexible amount. For example, if half of the cost of solar is the labor (not sure if it is or not), then even if the panels were free, it would only be competitive with certain kinds of gas plants.
That it wasn't allowed doesn't mean that it's not part of the accident chain. A solution is to not provide the reason for the denial of the medical, just that it's been denied/revoked.
I'm a pilot, too. And yes, aviate, navigate, communicate, in that order. The idea that "talking to somebody on the ground doesn't help you in an emergency" is meant for immediate concerns, especially when you're the only pilot aboard, like when you decide to abort a landing. Tower may call you with instructions, but until you've got things under control in the plane and are certain of pattern traffic, you don't worry about talking to them.
But flying an airliner is far from flying a Cessna (or Piper or Diamond or Mooney or whatever you're learning in). In the case of an emergency aboard an airliner, one pilot deals with the issue while the other flies the plane and communicates. The Continental 777-224 (MH370 was a 777-200ER) checklist for fire from the manual dated November 2002 includes the following under the heading "SMOKE / FUMES / FIRE ELEC":
It may be slightly different from Malaysia Air's manual for the 777-200 series, but not by very much. Notice that there's nothing that says that everything gets turned off immediately. In particular, note the line that says, "If practical, remove power from affected equipment by switch or circuit breaker in flight deck or cabin." If practical. Dropping communications is not terribly practical, especially when you're over water. It's also worth noting that there are separate breakers for the radios, one on each side of the breaker panel (I believe each pilot's panel contains a separate radio), and that the ACARS, a text-based system that can also be used to send messages, is reportedly difficult (but not impossible) to disable. On top of all of that, even if both radios got turned off by pulling the breakers, it takes literally two seconds to make the call, "MH370 declaring in-flight emergency" before pulling the breakers. The lack of communication after that would set off an immediate search and probably fighter intercept since they wouldn't know if the emergency was a fire, engine failure, or hijacking.
Further undermining your hypothesis (it's not a theory as you have little real evidence) is that the final radio communication was at 01:19:30 and the final transponder hit was at 01:21:13, more than 90 seconds later. If you were right that they started shutting things off rapidly due to a fire, it would mean that they took an exceptionally long break in ATC communications. I've listened to and participated a lot in transitions between ATC zones (a consequence of flying in the SoCal air
There were multiple failures in that chain. Lubitz was found unfit to fly and was told as much. He was then given a note to pass on to his employer. He didn't, was able to lock the captain out of the cockpit, and crashed the plane.
The failures included, at a minimum, the apparent lack of procedure for doctors to directly notify the airline and pilot certification authority that they were revoking his medical, and lack of procedure requiring that two people be in the cockpit at all times. A direct notification of the airline or pilot certification authority at the time of the revocation (like, before he even left the building) or a requirement that a flight attendant be in the cockpit when one of the pilots is outside it probably would have prevented this.
MH370 was almost certainly not a fire. A fire wouldn't account for the path the plane took, nor would it explain why so many communications systems were shut down or why no distress call was made. Voice communications ceased immediately after a handoff from Malaysian to Vietnamese ATC, and the transponder was turned off soon after.
Pedantic note: They were designed to withstand the impact of a 727, a larger plane than the DC-9 that was already in service when the DC-9 first flew.
That's how it used to be, and a reason why Cessna and some other companies stopped making new planes for more than a decade. General aviation manufacturers have better protections now, but insurance costs and FAA Part 23 regulations have driven up the cost of aircraft to ridiculous amounts. A fully-equipped Cessna 172P sold for about $42,000 in 1982 (about $103,000 in 2015 dollars). It wasn't a casual purchase, but it wasn't hard for a club or a moderately successful person to buy one.
Today, the 172S has a base price of $364,000 (about $147,000 in 1982 dollars), and the prices only get worse from there for planes that have practical four-seat capability. Part of it is because glass cockpits have become the standard for most new aircraft, but insurance is still extremely high and the FAA hasn't allowed more advanced construction methods to be used without enormous testing that makes it financially infeasible. Hopefully, that will change with the Part 23 rewrite, but I don't think anyone is expecting a 2/3 drop in aircraft prices.
And we're thankful for that. However, since those are largely codified into law now, the need for the unions has lessened.
I've seen a family member burned by aerospace unions in the '80s and '90s. He got so sick of them showing up at the picket lines in fancy cars and wearing expensive suits, continuing to draw a salary while he got strike benefits (a pittance) that he started crossing the picket lines to work.
On the other hand, I've also seen the nurses' union fight to increase the number of nurses per patient, both to increase patient safety and to decrease burnout in the nursing industry.
There's enough good that some unions still have value, but there's also enough bad that some of them are just dead weight. When unions exist solely to protect themselves, they've become as bad as the companies they once battled.
He's trying to force Iraq and its local allies to deal with the problem rather than inserting American troops into combat situations in an area where they're largely unwanted or even hated. (The forces on the ground are largely there for training, not combat.) Part of dealing with the problem was getting the extremely anti-Sunni al-Maliki out and bringing in al-Abadi, who has promised to work with the Sunnis and has reportedly done so well enough to start changing the minds of some of the Sunni tribal leaders.
By conducting airstrikes, the US and participating allies are filling in a gap in Iraq's military capabilities. They have a few strike aircraft, but they're old and not built to handle the weapons that Iraq is buying from the West. The first F-16s in the Iraqi Air Force were delivered to Iraq itself (rather than being used for training Iraqi pilots in Arizona) just three weeks ago. Delivery was delayed over security concerns at Balad Air Base, which isn't far from ISIS territory.
I don't know if it will work, but it's probably the best option from a list of pretty much only bad options right now. The air mission may be expanding, though, as the US has said it is willing, together with Turkey, to protect civilian populations in at least part of Syria from Syrian bombing runs. That suggests a no-fly zone for those parts, and that can result in a serious escalation. (Turkey wants a no-fly zone over all of Syria and has called for it for years.) All it takes is for one Syrian aircraft to be knocked down and Syria to respond by even targeting US or allied planes with surface-to-air radar, and the US will have reason to respond by taking out at least part of Syria's air defense network and possibly its air force. That could turn the controlled chaos barely held together by Syrian forces into complete anarchy if the government forces are denied air cover. It could be what actually breaks the back of the government, and then it will be a race between ISIS, al-Nusra, and the Free Syrian Army coalition to get to Damascus. At least if ISIS gets knocked down or out, there's a slim chance of a negotiated collapse.
So far, Syria has been tolerant of Turkey shooting down a couple of its aircraft that strayed too close to or over the border with Turkey, but it may not be so willing to tolerate its aircraft being shot down well inside its own territory. If it escalates, we might see just what the actual effectiveness of the Russian S300 SAM system actually is.
I'm not ascribing special status. I'm explaining how they think and how they view outsiders. Russia has been a fairly xenophobic society for a very long time.
Whether they were successful in repelling the invaders isn't really a factor, either. It's that they're constantly concerned about being invaded. Check with the Poles and you'll find that they, too, are wary of it for precisely the reason that you mention. They're constantly looking over their shoulder at Russia, and don't fully trust Germany, either.
If benefits are what makes it morally right to use taxis over Uber/Lyft, then doesn't that make buying from large chain stores morally better than buying from mom-and-pop stores, since those are often so small that they don't have to provide benefits to their employees?
Every home I ever visited within my extended family was under 2000sf, and many of them were under 1300sf, until my parents bought a 2100sf home in the late 1990s. That was the biggest in the family until I bought my 3800sf house.
Go look at older neighborhoods, particularly those built before 1980. They're far smaller than we see today. Home sizes overall are growing, with the average in 2014 being 2600 square feet, larger than the 2400sf that was the average during the housing boom.
To proscribe is to prohibit. Perhaps you meant prescribe, or some other word, but using "proscribe" completely flips the meaning of your statement.
The taxi industry is a poor example if you're looking for something that needs sympathy. Getting in as anything other than a hired driver is nearly impossible. Look at the prices of taxi medallions. In Chicago, a medallion went for about $70K in 2007 before skyrocketing to $357,000 in 2013, then falling back to $270,000 earlier this year. In New York City, it's even worse: they were going for around $850,000 earlier this year, down from $1.2 million in early 2014.
There's also the problem of having a cab around when you want one. Some cities are great for this; the aforementioned Chicago and NYC are examples of places where it's generally easy to get a cab. But in much of Southern California or the Dallas suburbs, cabs are relatively rare, and even when calling the company, the wait can be significantly over an hour compared to an Uber or Lyft pickup time of usually only a few minutes.
In any case, if the only reason that a new industry is morally wrong is because it puts people out of work, then almost every industry today is morally wrong. The tractor industry would be wrong because it put farm workers out of work. The airlines would be morally wrong because they put ships' crews out of work. The printer companies would be morally wrong because they put typing pools out of work. And yet no one really claims this because it's not true.
I didn't say it makes them unimportant. I said it makes them hard to fight over, and that means far less chance of fighting. Absent discovery of significant resources in those locations that can be economically extracted, there's no reason for an outright war over them. India and China are both well aware of the problems that India and Pakistan have had fighting over the Siachen Glacier, where around 2000 troops have died, all but a few dozen from exposure, avalanches, or other climate-related circumstances. Neither China nor India wants to deal with that to fight over economically unimportant territory. That's why there's an occasional skirmish, but not much else.
One exception may be the Tawang region in eastern India, but China would still have to cross the mountains to take it if it came to war. India would likely have significant notification of a build-up, and could through airstrikes and artillery make life difficult for any Chinese forces heading over. That's not including whatever economic restrictions would be placed on China over such actions.
Russia and its predecessors have a history of about 800 years of being invaded by one group or another. These included the Mongols in 1223 (who weren't driven out completely until 1480), the Crimean Tatars in 1571, the Polish-Muscovite War from 1605-1618, the Cossack uprising and incursion from 1667-1670, Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Japan in 1904 (mostly naval, but still an attack by an outside power), and Germany in 1941. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the eventual joining of NATO by every non-Soviet member (plus the former Soviet Baltic states) is often seen internally as an incursion into Russian interests, with the discussions of Georgia and especially Ukraine joining NATO leaving Moscow surrounded by enemies who are only a couple of weeks' fighting from the gates of Moscow.
It has a traditional reason to be xenophobic, regardless of whether it makes logical sense to those outside Russia. The Warsaw Pact nations and the former Soviet republics were buffer zones for Russia, land they could afford to lose, at least temporarily, while ensuring that Russia itself survived.
The current situation is only barely tolerable to Moscow, and is exacerbated by recent low Russian birth rates and low life expectancy, leading to a decline in population for nearly two decades. While this is turning around recently, the increasing birth rate is also heavily subsidized by the government (families who have more than one child get a lump-sum payment of about 428,000 rubles (worth about $6800 now, as much as $11,000 before the downturn in oil prices) and heavily dependent on the economy, which is in a difficult position, to say the least. As fragile as it is, it may decrease due to hits to the economy if more sanctions are added or the nuclear deal with Iran induces further oil price reductions, and perhaps in that case by increased alcoholism (more than a third of deaths in Russia are linked to alcohol).
I don't expect Russia to go to nuclear war, but they see the situation as desperate, possibly bordering on disastrous, and it puts them in a difficult position where even pie-in-the-sky ideas (like a Bering Straits bridge, to get back to the original post) sound like a good idea. You might think their position self-made, illogical, or even stupid, but it's very real. You don't have to agree with it to understand it, but dismissing it is just dangerous.
Sometimes it's the only way. We held off on airstrikes against ISIS specifically to ensure that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki would not hold on to his position. As soon as his successor's selection (and so someone who actually accepted the Sunni) was ensured, airstrikes started in earnest. (They had begun already to help protect Yazidi tribes fleeing ISIS persecution, but only a handful of those happened.)
As much as Karmashock's hyperbole and predictions are off-base, on that point, he's right.
If a bomb that small is required to take down a bridge designed for that environment, it's a poorly-designed bridge at best.
China is prodding Vietnam and the Philippines over maritime claims, yes, but to say they're picking on Japan isn't really accurate, as Tokyo's nationalist mayor restarted the public argument over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. This triggered Japan's nationalization of the islands to try to ward off further diplomatic incident, causing an incident which inflamed the Chinese people, which demanded action from the government... The whole thing is a mess that the governments in Beijing and Tokyo would be much happier to see die down again.
And how are you bringing India into this? Aside from a moderately-disputed, very high-altitude border that would be difficult to cross with ground forces (let alone fight in), China and India don't have much in the way of overlapping claims. Even if China got serious territorial ambitions for Indian territory, India's military is at least as good as China's, wouldn't have lengthy supply lines to deal with, and has far more combat experience in the last few decades than does China. The Indian Navy--much stronger than China's--could also make life incredibly difficult for Chinese trade passing through the Indian Ocean for Africa and the Suez Canal, especially since India has a strong blue-water navy and China is still coming to grips with serious operations outside of the China Seas.